United States Ninth Circuit

In a challenge by conservation groups to the U.S. being part of a treaty allegedly allowing Canadian overharvesting of salmon covered by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), dismissal of two claims for lack of standing is affirmed, but dismissal of a third is reversed where: 1) plaintiffs' substantive challenge to National Marine Wildlife Service's (NMWS) biological opinion prior to U.S. entrance into the treaty, and their challenge to continued implementation of the treaty lacked redressability because the Court cannot affect U.S. entrance into or withdrawal from a treaty; but 2) plaintiffs did establish associational standing on their claim of procedural failure by the NMWS to reinitiate consultation, under section 7 of the ESA, on the biological opinion issued due to new information regarding actual salmon takes and effects on the population.

Appellate Information

• Argued 04/11/2008
• Decided 10/08/2008
• Published 10/08/2008

Judges

• McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:, Before: A. WALLACE TASHIMA, M. MARGARET McKEOWN, and W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Eric Redman, Svend A. Brandt-Erichsen, Kelly B. Fennerty, Heller Ehrman LLP, Seattle, WA, for the plaintiffs-appellants.


• For Appellees:
  
• Matthew J. McKeown, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Coby Howell, Ellen Durkee, Mark Haag, Environmental & Natural Resources Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for the defendants-appellees.